The major function of absorbent articles such as diapers, adult incontinence briefs, sanitary napkins and other disposable articles for receiving body exudates is to prevent such body exudates from soiling, wetting, or otherwise contaminating clothing or other articles, such as bedding, that may come in contact with the wearer. In recent years, disposable diapers, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,151,092 issued to Buell et al., have become very popular and have generally replaced durable cloth absorbent articles because of their convenience and reliability. However, despite the effectiveness of such disposable absorbent articles, body exudates often still leak or are stored in the article such that the exudates soil and/or irritate the skin of the wearer. Additionally, body exudates often adhere aggressively to skin, increasing the difficulty of cleaning and increasing the likelihood of chronic residual contamination. The fundamental causes of these, and other key problems with absorbent articles of the art lie in the mobility under applied shear stress and adhesiveness of the feces.
The undesirable effects of leakage and/or improper containment, difficult cleanup, and/or residual skin contamination are especially evident with regard to fecal matter deposited in the article. Feces contained in the article which comes in contact with the wearer, or which is left on the skin after attempts at cleanup, can harm the skin of the wearer over time. Feces leaking from the article almost invariably presents unpleasant, messy cleanups of not only the wearer, but also of clothing or other objects that may come in contact with the wearer. Thus, several attempts have been made to add features to absorbent articles such as barriers, pockets, spacers, transverse barriers, apertured topsheets and the like to limit the movement of the fecal material across the topsheet and/or to better confine the fecal matter in the article. However, such attempts have been generally unsuccessful because they fail to address the fundamental causes of these problems (i.e., the properties of feces) and, because of their cost and complexity. Further, many of the means for isolating or containing feces are directed to fecal material with certain physical properties (e.g., viscosity, free water content and particle size) and are not effective with exudates with physical properties outside a very small range.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,790,836 discloses a diaper including layer of medicated powder located between the absorbent core and a water-soluble film. The medicated powder is used to promote drying of the infant's skin after the wearer wets the diaper. However, as shown in Tables II and VIII, below, embodiments such as disclosed in this patent do not function to provide the feces management benefits of the present invention. It is also known to coat a topsheet of a disposable absorbent article with a lotion composition which can transfer to the skin of the wearer, such as disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,607,760, 5,609,587, 5,635,191 and 5,643,588. However, such a lotion composition alone may not provide the enhanced fecal removability/cleaning benefit of the present invention.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a disposable article with improved bodily exudate management properties, such as a disposable article providing desirable feces modification and/or enhanced feces removability. Further, it would be advantageous to provide an economical disposable article with the ability to minimize the negative effects of feces or other viscous bodily waste on the wearer or the caregiver. It would also be advantageous to provide an article which is designed to chemically or physically interact with the feces and to change the properties of the feces in order to improve acceptance of feces into the article and/or immobilization of the feces within the article and/or reduce the residual contamination of the wearer's skin with feces. Also, it would be desirable to provide an article having sufficient effective capacity and retention capability to store the physically or chemically modified feces safely and cleanly away from the wearer's skin and/or clothing throughout the expected time of use. It would be further desirable to provide an article which enhances the efficacious cleanup of feces from the wearer's skin.